all versions of the linux kernel expect docbook sgml utils to be named db2<format> instead of docbook2<format> when building the kernel docs. in 2.5/2.6 fixing this just requires changing a few things in the Documentation/DocBook/Makefile. in 2.4 i believe you might need to edit a script, i have no idea. also, i think kernels should perhaps depend on transfig if you have doc in the use, or even better a local use flag like kernel-docs since i doubt most people want to build api docs for their kernel. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce:
Created attachment 14522 [details, diff] docbook fix for 2.5/2.6 This patch fixes this problem for the 2.6.0-test1 kernel and I'm assuming the 2.5.x kernels as well. This will not fix 2.4.
Closing as FIXED; most 2.6 sources in Portage use kernel-2.eclass which runs a sed to solve the issue. If you still get this on some other 2.6 sources please feel free to reopen this bug. Thanks!
